A British company, it was founded in 1909 by the investor Horatio Barber and engineers William Oke Manning and Howard T. Wright.
Horatio Barber had made a fortune in Canada when, back in England, he met the friends William Manning and Howard Wright.
The first aircraft, the ASL monoplane No.1, was of canard layout with a pusher propeller driven by a 37 kW (50 hp) Antoinette V-8 engine.
[1] Also of canard design, it had a 42 feet (13 m) wing-span and was powered by a rear-mounted 60 hp (45 kW) Green D.4 engine mounted above the trailing edge of the wing and driving an 8 ft 2 in (2.49 m) diameter two-bladed pusher propeller.
The tailplane stabiliser and front-mounted tractor propeller had by now become established as the conventional layout, while an increasing number of manufacturers were hedging their bets by building both monoplanes and biplanes.